Episode 7 - Saddam Hussein, Brazil and Riots in France

Transcript for Episode 7 - 17 December 2018

 

Iraq...Fifteen years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, a concerning development in Brazil and our first ever interview with expert commentary on the riots in Paris.

 

I'm Chuck Holton, and this is the hot zone.

 

[intro]

 

Hi folks.  Hope you had a great weekend.  Today let's start by talking about Iraq.  Fifteen years ago last week Operators from the US Army Delta Force pulled Saddam Hussein out of a hole in the ground at a remote farm near his hometown of Tikrit.  His disheveled mug shot went viral within hours.  It was a major victory in the US-led campaign to put an end to the terror-supporting regime.  

 

The United States has expended a whole lot of blood and treasure in Iraq since that historic day, and we've still got about six thousand US servicemen on the ground there to this day. No one could have imagined the profound impact the war would have on America and the rest of the world.

 

It's become part of America's longest war.  Many people don't realize that American soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen and Marines who served in the last fifteen years have often spent more time at war than any US troops in US History.  I know guys who have ten and twelve deployments under their belts.  I myself have made more than twenty trips to Iraq and Afghanistan covering the war.  Now, many who served at the beginning of this conflict are watching their sons and daughters get deployed to the same places they themselves once served.  

 

Iraq is slowly pulling itself out of the morass of sectarian division, but this will be a generations long process, one that cannot be completed by the US military.  If there's anything we've learned in the last fifteen years, it's that the American war machine is the most efficient, lethal and devastating force ever seen on this planet at taking out a well-defined enemy.  But whenever we attempt to turn those warriors into policemen or diplomats, we fail pretty miserably.  That's why I've come to the opinion that our foreign policy should be this:  If you present a threat to the United States of America, we will quickly and efficiently reboot your country by taking out your leaders and giving you a clean slate.  Then as quickly as we came, we will leave, and let you rebuild your country any way you want.  And the moment we decide you have once again become a threat, we'll rain fire on you again and let you keep trying until you get it right.  

 

The marines have a motto.  No better friend, no worse enemy.  That's about the most perfect foreign policy statement I've ever heard.  Rather than spending trillions of the people's treasure to try and create a jeffersonian democracy in a place that hasn't figured out how to use modern toilets yet, opening ourselves up to incredible attrition and feeding the corruption that is endemic to places like Iraq and Afghanistan, it would be smarter to take out people who threaten us with extreme speed, surprise and violence of action and then leave them to put the pieces back together however they like.  Thats' just my opinion.

 

Iraq today is still gripped by sectarian strife and the lingering evil of ISIS, but according to my sources on the ground there, things are improving little by little.  The biggest threat today is the power struggle taking place in the North between Turkey, the Kurds, the Iranian-controlled Provisional Military Units, Russia and the United States.  Everyone wants to control what happens now with Mosul and up into Syria.  So the violence will likely continue for some time.  

 

Now to Brazil.  There are a LOT of things to talk about there, but we don't have time today to go into it all.  Right now I just want to point out something you might have missed in the news.  There was a church shooting in Brazil this week in which a gunman walked into a cathedral in the central city of Campinas and opened fire during a mass.  Five were killed and several others wounded before the gunman turned the gun on himself.

 

This concerning because its the first time we've seen a random mass shooting in Brazil, and it appears to me that the wall-to-wall media coverage of mass homicides like this is causing events like this to spread.

 

It also shows that this phenomenon is not unique to the United States, although we regularly hear politicians say things like this:  

 

Obama saying "These kinds of events do not take place in other advanced countries" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg0gXeWeywA

 

The reality, however, says different.  In a recent report from the Crime Prevention Research Center, America ranks twelfth among western countries for mass shootings per capita, and eleventh for death rate per capita by mass public shootings.  

 

Important to understand about the shooting in Brazil is that country currently has in place all of the so-called "common sense gun regulations" that are being called for by many politicians in the US.  

 

There's a whole lot more to Brazil that we'll have to get to another time.  Right now I want to go back to the ongoing unrest in France, as violent "yellow vest" protests continue to rock Paris and other cities across that country.  I recently spoke with an expert on this subject, Chuck Devore, from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and he had so much great stuff to share that I'm going to play the entire interview for you.  

 

[Chuck Devore Interview]

 

I have conducted hundreds of interviews over the past fifteen years, and I have to say, Chuck is one of the most well-spoken, competent people I've ever had the pleasure of speaking with.  I highly recommend you go read any of his books, and his really insightful articles published in Forbes Magazine.

 

Well that's all we have time for today.  Thanks for your support, and please let us hear from you!  You can find me at the hot zone podcast on Facebook, and please give us a like and a follow there, or on Itunes, Youtube or Podbean.  Also, if you'd like to support the podcast, go to Patreon.com/hotzone and become a subscriber.  

 

Have a great day, and we'll see you back here tomorrow on the Hot Zone.

 

[Outro]